Picture this: February 1898. The USS Maine is chilling in Havana harbor. Suddenly—KABOOM! The ship blows up. 266 sailors die. Nobody knows why.
Newspapers go wild. They scream: “Remember the Maine! To hell with Spain!” Never mind that the explosion was probably an accident. America wanted a fight. And we got one.
It was the first war fought with headlines as weapons. Yellow journalism? That’s the term. It means selling papers by being loud and wrong. It worked perfectly.
